


From Eden

by transdimensional_void



Series: I Swallowed the Sun [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Break Up, Divorce, F/M, Getting Back Together, Homophobia, M/M, Parent!Dan, Phandom Big Bang, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:57:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4961506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been twelve years since Dan last saw Phil, twelve years during which Dan has been to hell and back. It’s been twelve years since the boy Phil fell in love with vanished. But now Dan’s back, and he has a story to tell... (Songfic for "From Eden" by Hozier)</p><p>Betaed by spaghattanadles on tumblr, Art by iamphanlocked on tumblr (See fic on tumblr for art: http://transdimensional-void.tumblr.com/post/130809682054/from-eden)</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Eden

No single idea had fucked up Dan’s life more than the belief that utopia could be achieved on earth — that happiness and humans were things capable of being perfected. Just how many moments of his life had he wasted in the noble pursuit of perfection? 

Take today’s weather for example. He’s stood there on the pavement across from a tall, glassy office building on a morning in late May, and some would say the weather is perfect. The sun is out but not too hot. The sky is a soft blue dotted over with cottony clouds. There is just the hint of a breeze to keep the heat from building up too much down here on the streets. It’s the kind of day people write poetry about, but all Dan can think is that it could be better.

He could be on a tropical beach instead, for instance. Or at the very least in a park laid out on the grass. Or he could not be alone.

He starts to lift his Starbucks cup to his lips but pauses when the revolving doors of the building across the road revolve out a tall man with black hair and slightly-stooped shoulders. Everyone else Dan has seen enter or leave the building has been dressed in smart suits or shirts and ties, but the man he is watching now is wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and Converse. He must be working some sort of creative job, Dan thinks and finally takes his sip.

The sun glints off the man’s black hair as he turns left and starts to make his way down the crowded pavement. He’s heading toward the tube station, Dan has guessed, but which line he will take and which stop he will get off at Dan hasn’t figured out yet.

He watches until the other man disappears around a corner. Then he turns, drops his drink into a nearby bin, and begins to make his unhurried way in the opposite direction.

He takes a bus. His own destination is conveniently close by. Just a quick ride, no more than two stops, and he’s hopping off in front of another non-descript building on a narrow city street.

Inside, it’s all bright colors and high-pitched laughter and sticky fingers. He’s barely through the door before a small body is barreling across the room toward him and a pair of arms are wrapping themselves around his knees.

“Hello, there! Did you have a good day?” he says, prying her off him so he can kneel down and try to look into the lowered eyes.

“Yes, Daddy,” she murmurs. He reaches down to ruffle her messy, dark curls, but she keeps her gaze fixed down around his toes.

“Hannah painted a very nice picture today, didn’t you, dear?”

One of the teachers has walked over, a middle-aged woman with a kind smile. Dan offers her a nod of thanks before addressing Hannah again.

“Do you want to show me your picture?”

Hannah’s chin jerks up and down once in the most begrudging agreement Dan thinks he’s ever seen, but she lets go of him finally and walks over to a table and picks up a piece of paper that is mostly blank. She brings it over, and in the very center are a few smudges of green and brown paint. Dan tries not to sigh. Hannah is four, and when she was three she used to paint with such enthusiastic strokes that their kitchen table ended up with some permanent rainbow-colored stains.

“Tell me about your painting,” he says, smiling to show her he approves.

“It’s a tree,” she says, and no matter how many more questions he asks, that is all she is willing to say.

He thanks the teachers and signs his daughter out of the school for the day.

“Shall we go get your big sister then?” he asks as they push open the door and step out into the bright May sunshine again. Hannah squeezes the hand she is holding even tighter, and he takes that as a yes.

 

Esther really lets him have it over dinner.

“I  _hate_  England,” she states in her strong, stern voice. Her eyebrows are drawn forcefully together, and her black eyes are stormy. “Everyone says I talk weird, and we never go to church.”

That catches Dan a little off guard, and he pauses with his forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth.

“Do you want to go to church?”

“No--” The quickness of her answer would be humorous if he couldn’t tell just how genuinely upset she is, “-- but Mom said you were supposed to take us.”

If he’d been having this argument with almost anyone other than his eight-year-old, Dan would most likely have pointed out that if her mother wanted her to go to church she should have taken her herself. Instead, he sets his fork down and says,

“If you really want to go, I can get Ciaran’s mum to take you.”

Esther’s lip juts out and she glances toward her younger sister, perhaps hoping for support. However, it’s always been Esther who is the outspoken one, and Hannah is content to sit silent on the sidelines and push her food around her plate. Esther gives up and turns her scowl back on her father.

“I want to go back to Florida,” she says, and then she shoves herself back from the table, jumps out of her chair and runs out of the room. A few seconds later, they can hear a door slamming. Dan casts his eyes toward the ceiling -- a habit he has formed of looking up when he doesn’t know what to do. He is certainly not moving back to Florida, and from the looks of things, neither are the girls.

It takes far too long to get Hannah to sleep that night. After nearly an hour of lullabies, bedtime stories, and evening prayers, she finally closes her eyes and seems to drift off. She’s always hated conflict of any kind. Even if she’s said nothing about it, her sister’s outburst at dinner has rattled her.

Esther is even worse. He finds her sitting in the center of her bed with earbuds in her ears, and when he sits down next to her, she just turns away and crosses her arms.

He pulls one of the earbuds out.

“I know you’re upset, love, but we have to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she throws at him over her shoulder. “I want to see Mom. I want to see Stephanie. I want to go back home.”

“You know your mum is very busy right now, Esther. You’re helping her out a lot by staying here with me instead.”

She turns toward him then, her face bright with a sudden smile.

“We could live with Grandma and Grandpa! Since Mom is busy, me and Hannah could live with them instead--”

“No.” Even he is startled by how loudly the word comes out. He winces and glances toward the wall that this room shares with Hannah’s.

His older daughter’s eyebrows lower into a scowl again.

“You never listen to me. You don’t even care what I want. I hate you!”

He can’t help wincing again. He hadn’t been expecting to have to deal with this level of rebelliousness at least until she was a teenager.

“Well, I love you, and I’m doing everything I can to make this easier for you and Hannah. It would be really nice if you would help me do that.”

She just glares at him before shoving her earbud back in her ear and turning away.

 

He checks on her an hour or so later to find her tucked away under her duvet, her iPod lying on the pillow next to her. He picks it up and wraps the cord around it before setting it on her bedside table and leaving her room once more.

In his own bedroom, he crawls onto the wide bed and pulls his laptop up onto his knees and slips his own earbuds into his ears. The url is so familiar it’s almost as though his fingers are typing it in of their own volition. He clicks on the playlist, the first video starting up with its usual, cheery greeting, and as soon as he hears the voice he feels himself relax. He falls asleep like that, with the laptop sat in the empty bed beside him and Phil’s voice filling his ears.

 

_the way the pearl grey light of morning glimmered along the contours of his form_

_the way he sometimes smiled in his sleep_

_the way his eyes closed and his breath hitched on the night they first kissed_

 

In the morning it’s up early and throw together breakfast for the three of them so that he can coax Hannah out of bed and Esther into her school uniform in time to get them all down to the bus stop by 8:05.

He’s thought of getting a car several times in the past two months since the girls first came to live with him, but London is expensive enough as it is, especially with the exorbitant amounts he pays for the girls’ school fees. Even with the money Maria sends him, he worries that the cost of maintaining a vehicle would be a strain on their budget.

He and Hannah drop Esther off at her primary school first. She’d been sulky over breakfast, barely looking up from her eggs on toast for the entire meal. Now, as he hands her off the bus, she turns back and gives him a swift peck on the cheek before dashing off toward her school’s front gate. A grin sneaks up onto his face as the bus door slides closed again. Outspoken she may be, but Esther’s never been one to hold a grudge for long.

Quiet Hannah is the greater worry. He gets off the bus with her and walks her up to the front desk to sign her in.

“Good morning, Miss Hannah,” the young secretary at the desk says, a smile widening his cheeks. “We’re so glad to have you with us again today.”

But Hannah just clings even harder to her father’s side and hides her face against him.

“Aren’t you going to say good morning back?” Dan murmurs, and she shakes her head. “Of course you are because you are a very polite girl, aren’t you?”

She peeks out for a moment and mumbles something. Dan is debating whether or not to push her to make a proper greeting when one of the teachers appears and whisks her away to class. Perhaps it’s better that he didn’t push her, he tells himself as he steps back out onto the pavement once more.

Now he is free, with a whole long day ahead of him. He doesn’t have any sessions scheduled for today. He could use the time to run errands (he makes a mental note to stop by the shops and pick up more laundry detergent) or to try to work on some of his personal projects. It’s another lovely, mild day, though, and there is a park nearby where it’s nice to walk among the trees and try to let the wind empty his thoughts.

He wanders the park for a while first, stopping to stare out over the green pond water or to watch some ducks waddle past. There isn’t much else to see here, though, so eventually he drops himself on an out-of-the-way corner of the grass to idly gaze at the other park patrons.

Hannah is too much like him.

He’s thought it before, and he supposes he’ll think it again a million times over the course of his life. When she’s happy, she’s like a thousand-watt bulb beaming smiles and sunshine at anyone lucky enough to wander into her orbit. But when she gets like this, when something blocks her way, when she doesn’t know how to move forward, it’s like a flip has been switched. If you asked her where the light has gone, she would probably tell you there never was any light to start with.

Esther is more like their mother: a steady burn of confident stubbornness. He sees it even more, now, when she looks at her younger sister, dim and dull, and he can see her trying to puzzle her out. Like she thinks her sister is a question with an answer. Or a light with a switch that can just be flipped back on. Maria had never really understood that — that there was no switch and there was no answer.

He shakes his head and sits up a little bit more. He doesn’t want to think about Maria. Instead he’d rather look up at the sky and think about how much he’s always loved the color blue. That is one advantage Florida had over England — a steadier supply of blue skies. Here they are so rare that he can remember specific ones. Like that sky in September, when he’d been hiding out behind the gym at his new school and a lanky, blue-eyed kid had shuffled up and asked to join him.

He lets his eyelids down and turns his face up to catch the mild heat of the springtime sun and thinks about the nervous shiver that had run through the kid’s body as he sank to the ground beside Dan. About the cautious way he’d bent back the edge of Dan’s book to read the title from the cover. About his eyes drifting left to glance at Dan for the briefest of moments before snapping back to the book.

But Dan had noticed him long before that, had seen the way he peeked at him from across the classroom when he didn’t think Dan was looking. It had scared Dan a little at first, the intensity behind those quick, shy glances, and then it had stopped scaring him and started making his heart hammer hard in his chest every time he caught him at it.

Somewhere nearby a toddler screeches, and Dan’s eyes pop open again. The day is still bright, though a few clouds have come out now to haze the blue of the sky, and Dan decides that’s his cue to move on. He clambers up from the grass and brushes a few blades from the seat of his jeans. A quick check of his watch startles him. It’s past 11:00. When did that happen?

He’s almost out of the park now, his thoughts already on the bus toward home and what he might have for lunch, when something seen from the corner of his eye stops him cold in his tracks — just a glint of sunlight off dark hair, but that is enough.

He turns to his right, and there he is, stood just ten or fifteen meters from where Dan has paused, half-turned away from him. One hand holds a phone up to his ear, and the other is rising to wave to someone off in the distance. Dan is frozen in place. All he can do is watch. It’s been twelve years since they were this close to one another, and the other man has no idea Dan is even there. His hand lowers, and then he ends his phone call and slips the phone into his pocket, and Dan asks himself if he’s going to do it or not. He could just walk over. Just tap him on the shoulder. Just say, “Hi, Phil. Long time no see.”

“There you are!”

It’s Phil’s voice. Despite having listened to it on video hundreds of times over the past seven or so years, Dan had not been prepared to hear it now, live, so painfully close.

“Yeah, I have a long lunch today,” Phil is saying, and that’s when Dan realizes he’s speaking to someone. A woman. She’s walked up to where Phil is and taken hold of one of his hands, and she is staring into his eyes and smiling. Dan thinks he might be ill. He wants to leave, but his body doesn’t seem to be responding to his brain’s commands at the moment.

“You’ll never guess what I cooked,” she’s saying and holding up a bag to show him.

“Doesn’t matter. I know it’ll be delicious,” Phil is responding, and then the two of them start walking off towards some benches under the nearby trees.

Dan’s foot moves, just a centimeter or two in the direction of Phil, but he stops it. He doesn’t want to follow them. He doesn’t want to hear. He just wants to leave.

He turns away at last, legs stiffly carrying him toward the bus stop. Phil never mentioned a girlfriend in any of his videos, but then why would he? He rarely talked about his private life much at all on the internet, at least not these days. What if she was more than a girlfriend? Had either of them had rings on their fingers? Dan could kick himself for not checking.

But how had he never considered this possibility before? He himself had gotten married to someone else — started a family even. But he’d just assumed Phil was still the same Phil in his memories — older of course, and maybe a little taller. And he dyed his hair these days, but he was essentially the same. Or so he’d always seemed when, late at night when he at last had some moments to himself, Dan would sneak a look at his YouTube channel. And if he was essentially the same, then shouldn’t he still be in love with Dan the way Dan was — had always been, would always be — wholly in love with him?

When the bus comes, Dan barely even notices himself climbing on or slumping into one of the seats. He barely feels himself stepping off at the stop near his flat, pushing through the front door of the building, turning the key in the lock on his front door, collapsing onto the smooth leather of his couch. How had he let himself buy so fully into his own absurd fantasies?

 

_In the beginning, God created Dan’s mother and Dan’s father. He made for them a city and a house to be their home. In the city, he placed all manner of good things and good people, and he told Dan’s parents to go forth and multiply. They were obedient to his command, and so Dan came into the world. God looked on his creation and saw that it was good._

_Now Dan’s heart was more crafty than any of the other hearts that God had made. It said to Dan, “Did God really say, ‘You must not fall in love with another man?’ ” Dan knew that God had said so, for hadn’t his parents taught him? But he listened to his wayward heart instead. Dan fell and was banished from the city._

_But all was not lost! Dan and his family were not cast out into the desert to wander and waste. God, in His infinite wisdom, had prepared for them a Garden, a pure and perfect place to shelter  them from the evils of the world. A place where Dan’s heart could be cleansed of its doubts._

_So Dan and his parents entered the Garden, and at the gate God set an angel with a flaming sword to guard the way back out into the wicked world._

**

It has been six months since Dan moved to London. Six months since the divorce was finalized, and he left Florida for good.

At first, the girls had stayed with their mother, but then, a few months ago, she had hired a new promoter who had told her she needed to re-brand herself post-divorce, and then all of sudden she was going on tour -- her first tour without Dan on stage with her, and her first tour without Dan to see the girls got safely tucked into bed while she schmoozed at the after party. When she’d called Dan to tell him about the new tour, the first words out of his mouth had been a request that the girls come and live with him. She hadn’t even tried to argue.

Sometimes Dan wonders if she had really wanted kids in the first place, but they’d only been teenagers when they got married, and they hadn’t even left for their honeymoon before their friends and family were asking how soon to expect kids. There hadn’t even been a question about it.

It has been two months since he flew back to Florida and brought Esther and Hannah here to London with him, and he knows it will be a long time before any of them feels really comfortable here. They have settled into their routine of school and work and weekends out at museums or parks trying to feel like a normal family again. The routine keeps them going, and he supposes that is enough for now.

It has been five months since Dan discovered where Phil worked and four since he started showing up outside his office building on occasion.

It has been one month since he started showing up there every day — at least, every work day. But he’s never stopped to ask himself what he is there for. Had he ever really been planning to speak to Phil? What is he looking for when stands and waits for those few fleeting glimpses of a man he hardly knows any longer?

Today is the first time in a month that Dan does not wait outside of the building downtown to watch Phil push through the revolving door and make his way down to the tube station.

Instead, he picks Hannah up from nursery school and takes her for ice cream to kill time until Esther is finished with her after-school voice lessons. Then he and Hannah pick up her older sister together, and they go home and cook dinner. Esther begs to watch  _Frozen_  (for the fifth time that month) so she can sing along with every song, but Dan knows Hannah secretly hates the film (she finds the reindeer terrifying for some reason). He convinces the two of them that what they would really rather be doing is beating him at MarioKart (he sometimes lets Hannah win, though Esther has gotten good enough that he doesn’t have to).

Then he puts Hannah to bed, and once he is sure she is falling asleep, he lets Esther put on  _Frozen_  with the volume turned way down for long enough to sing along with “Let It Go.”

That night, for the first time in several weeks, once Esther too is in bed and asleep, he gets into his own bed and doesn’t pull out his laptop. Instead, he turns off the lights and stares at the ceiling, watching the shadows of the blinds grow and fade against the bare white as cars come and go along the street outside.

 

_Once, just once, he’d had Phil’s mobile number in his hand and stood next to a phone and planned to dial. In a hotel room with the glittering lights of Orlando laid out eleven stories below, while Maria was in the shower, nineteen-year-old Dan had reached for the receiver with trembling fingers. It had been years since he’d used a phone, long years that had almost blotted out all memory of why he so longed to call this number. The person waiting at the other end of the line had begun to seem like someone he’d known in a dream, or someone he had met in a past life. And Dan had decided that the memories of him were memories made by someone who was long dead._

 

In the morning, he nearly oversleeps. Thankfully, Hannah creeps into his room shortly after sunrise and tugs on his arm until he wakes so that she can ask whether or not he is going to get up and make her breakfast this morning.

When he’s seen the girls safely off to their respective schools, he stops by the studio for a recording session with an aspiring jazz singer he’s been hired to accompany. The singer’s voice is decent, though he has a tendency to sharp his high notes. On a different day, Dan might’ve minded, but today his thoughts are entirely elsewhere.

Early afternoon finds him sitting on the couch in his flat once again, listening to how quiet and empty the place sounds. He’s been here six months now, but the walls are still blindingly bare. He can ignore it when the girls are around, talking or arguing or whining, and generally making the flat seem lively. But now, when it is just him here alone, it strikes him how very empty a place it really is.

He stands from the couch and walks over to the corner where his single most-prized possession stands — his piano. It’s old, which is how he had managed to afford it, but it’s in excellent condition, and he actually loves the slight eccentricity of its tuning.

He sits down and lifts the cover, playing a few experimental chords, not knowing yet what he intends to do. He could go watch Phil again today, but what would be the point? It has been twelve years since Phil knew him. He clearly has a new life now, and it looks like a happy one. Who is Dan to show up out of the blue and ripple the pond?

He is playing Chopin now, as he often does when he plays to calm himself. And who’s to say Phil even still thinks of him? He might show up at Phil’s front door and find himself greeted with a faint, questioning stare. A “Sorry, do I know you?” A brisk smile and a, “Oh, Dan! Of course, from college. How have you been lately?”

And there would be no way for Dan to say, “I’ve thought of you almost every day since I left.”

Dan’s fingers slip from the piano keys, and the room falls silent. He wants to see him. It doesn’t matter how high the odds of rejection are, he still wants to see him, more than anything else he can imagine doing at that moment.

**

When Phil’s phone buzzes in his pocket, he is lying in his bed on the other side of town with a pillow over his head, and he is thinking that taking a full day off work was probably counterproductive. It’s only made it easier for him to wallow in his misery.

His phone has been silent since he’d received a reply from his boss saying it was okay to take a personal day. He has almost convinced himself that he’s forgotten about it where it lies in his jeans pocket, but the truth is he’s been in suspense all day as to whether or not it would buzz.

He makes himself wait for a full minute, lying perfectly still, with the pillow still blotting out the horrible daylight.

Then his hand slides down into his pocket, and he pushes the pillow aside just enough to see the dark screen. He takes a deep breath and presses the home button.

He has one new text. It reads, “i just wish i could talk to you one more time, phil.”

All at once, his heart is in his throat and his eyes are stinging. She just wants to talk to him one more time. To say what, though? To take back all those ridiculous things she told him yesterday? No, he can’t get his hopes up.

He swipes right and thinks for several more minutes before he at last types out his reply.

_OK. I want to talk too. Do you want to meet up somewhere?_

He reads it back a few times and then decides to change “somewhere” to “at the park.”

Then he presses send and shoves the phone over to the other side of the bed and pulls the pillow across his face again. Was that the right thing to do? Did he really want to see her right now?

When five minutes pass without a reply, he finds that he is too anxious to just lie there and wait anymore. He picks up the phone and shoves it in his pocket before sliding out of bed at last and shuffling off into his lounge. He turns the TV on, for noise and distraction, but his brain barely even registers the daytime talk show that starts playing.

His phone is dead silent in his pocket.

It’s been eleven minutes with no reply, and he can’t wait any longer. He pulls out his phone, ready to send another, desperate text when the screen lights up at last with a reply and the phone vibrates against his fingertips.

_who do you think this is_

He blinks at the message for several seconds before it strikes him that he doesn’t see Ana’s name above it. Instead there is a phone number, one he doesn’t recognize.

A chill creeps across his skin. Whoever they are, they know his name and his phone number. Is someone playing a joke on him? He runs through a list of people in his mind. Maybe his brother? But if it’s a joke, why did the person give in so quickly?

_Who is this?_

It looks weird to reply to a question with another question, but Phil doesn’t know how else to respond. A moment after he sends it, three dots pop up, and he knows the other person is writing.

_are you really phil_

Another chill crawls over his scalp, and he stands all of a sudden. The TV is still playing, but it might as well be playing to an empty room for all Phil notices it.

_Who are you?_

_meet me at the park and you’ll find out_

Now this is just getting creepy. There are only a handful of people in the world to whom Phil could say “meet me at the park” and know that the other person would show up at the same park as he would. If this wasn’t Ana, and it wasn’t someone in his family…maybe a co-worker?

_How do you know which park to go to?_

_you meant the one near your work right?_

“Holy shit,” Phil whispers aloud. “Holy shit.”

_Is this Ana?_

_no_

The other person is replying to him immediately now, and he has to admit he’s terrified.

_Why should I meet you if you won’t tell me who you are? Frankly, I’m considering reporting this to the police because you are really starting to frighten me._

There’s a long pause again this time, and Phil can’t help himself. He starts pacing up and down in front of his couch, phone screen held in front of his face with one hand while the fingers of the other worry at his hair.

Finally the three dots appear again.

_i’m sorry. this is really weird for me too. i didn’t expect it to really be you. i just tried your old number, and then you answered. but i meant what i said. i want to talk to you again, if you can._

An idea starts to form in Phil’s mind as he reads the words, but it’s such a ludicrous idea he waves it off almost at once. There’s no way. And besides, he’s had the same phone number for more than twelve years now. There must be tons of people he’s given it out to and then lost touch with. The person texting him right now absolutely can’t by any stretch of the imagination be the one person he kept that number for.

But—

_OK. I’ll meet you. In the park, in forty-five minutes. But if I get there and you aren’t there, I’m not waiting._

_i’ll be there_

The ride to the park is interminable. It seems that every few seconds, Phil has his phone out of his pocket again, thumb poised above the keypad, ready to message his mysterious interlocutor to call the whole thing off. More than one of his fellow passengers casts him an annoyed glare out of the corner of their eye, probably because he can’t get his leg to stop bouncing with nervous energy.

When he steps out of the tube station and onto a busy street corner, the day has turned cloudy and taken on a slight chill. Unbidden, thoughts of autumn and sooty rain creep into the back of his mind. He shivers and turns his steps toward the park.

_I’ll find a way. I promise I’ll find way._

The park entrance is two and a half blocks from the station, and as he walks them, Phil has that weird feeling he often has in dreams that each step he takes is slower than the last so that no matter how much effort he puts into walking, he moves no closer to his destination. A brisk breeze rises from nowhere, rushing down between tall buildings and tugging at his hair.

He reaches the wrought-iron gates marking the entrance to the park and stops, his feet refusing to carry him any further.

_I’m here._

He types the message and sends it, half in hopes that the person on the other end will say they can’t make it after all.

_me too. where are you? i can’t see you_

There’s still the option of turning back, taking the train back home, hiding under his pillow again.

The gate is open, and he steps through.

There are fewer people in the park today than there had been yesterday. He pauses just inside the gate and casts his gaze around. Was it really only yesterday that he was here with Ana, obliviously enjoying a romantic picnic?

He glances over to the tables where they’d eaten their meal, and his heart stops for a moment. Someone is sitting there, looking straight at him. Someone with brown hair and dark eyes framed by purple smudges.

The wind picks up again, sharper and with a hint of moisture now. The man sat at the table keeps his eyes fixed on Phil, but the sudden blast of chilly air causes him to cross his arms over his chest and hunch his shoulders a bit, and that is how Phil knows he is real. A figment of his imagination would probably not be bothered by the cold.

And that’s when Phil loses his nerve.

He spins on his heel, turns his back on the man waiting for him beneath the trees, and begins to run through the gate again. He can hear a voice shouting behind him, a voice that is strange and eerily familiar all at once. And maybe this is all a dream after all, for it seems to take him no time at all to reach the tube station again.

The ride home happens in the blink of an eye. When he steps out of the station and into the residential area near his home, his phone buzzes in his pocket, once.

He pulls it out, the unseasonable chill once again biting at his cheeks.

_i hoped you would want to see me again, but i guess i was wrong. i’m sorry. i hope all of the memories of me aren’t bad ones._

Phil scrunches his eyes closed tight and bites his lip as he tries to understand what is happening. If this had happened six months ago, he would have taken it like an answer to a prayer. But it hadn’t happened then. And it hadn’t happened for nearly twelve years before that either. So Phil had decided it was time to move on, at last. Six months he’d dedicated to finally moving on from Dan, and what was his reward?

Dan, in the flesh, waiting for him in a park and staring at him with his two black holes for eyes.

What had he ever done to the universe for it to toy with him like this?

“And I just ran away,” Phil mutters, stuffing his phone in his pocket and slouching off toward his flat again.

 

When Dan picks up Hannah from school later on, the four-year-old is struck by something in her father’s demeanor. He is much quieter than normal, and though he asks her about her day, he doesn’t press her for details like he usually does. She clings tightly to his hand and gazes up at him with a measuring look as he guides her down to the bus stop. Something is wrong with Daddy.

Esther doesn’t seem to pick up on the change in their father, and Hannah finds herself growing increasingly annoyed by Esther’s blithe chatter. She’s going on and on and on about how she’d joined a music club at her school and how the other kids thought she was a great singer. Any other day, Hannah would have felt proud of her sister — she really was a great singer, just like Mommy — but today, Hannah just wants her to hush so that she can figure out what is going on with Daddy.

When they walk through the door of the flat, Daddy announces that they are going to order pizza for dinner, and Esther jumps up and down and screams with excitement. Hannah joins in because, really, it’s pizza and how could she  _not_  get excited about that? But then Daddy puts on  _Frozen_  and puts Esther in charge of paying the pizza deliveryman when he arrives, and he goes into his room and shuts the door. She hears the lock turn, though Esther is too busy singing “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” to notice.

“Esther, be  _quiet_!” Hannah yells, her frustration getting the better of her at last.

“Shhhhh! I’m singing!” her older sister replies, casting her an offended look.

“Stop singing then,” Hannah says, walking over to the TV and turning it off.

“What did you do that for?” Esther demands, rushing over and trying to turn the TV back on. She can’t believe that Hannah just cut her off mid-song. Hannah flings her arms out and blocks the buttons on the TV with her body, and Esther knows the only way she’s going to get around her little sister is violence, or— “I’m telling Daddy!”

“No!” Hannah leaps forward and grabs hold of her sister’s arm before she can take two steps. “Leave him alone.”

“Stop it! Let me go! Why are you being so weird?” Esther yells, shaking her arm to try to loosen her sister’s grip.

Fortunately, the doorbell rings before the fight can grow any worse. Hannah lets her sister go, and Esther scoops up the little pile of money Dad has given her and walks over to the front door of the flat.

As soon as she opens it, she holds the money out to the tall man standing there.

“Hello. Erm, I think I might have the wrong house,” the man says, blinking down at her.

She hasn’t properly looked at him until now, but it strikes her that he is definitely not holding a pizza.

“Where’s the pizza?” she asks, yanking her hand back and holding the precious bills to her chest.

“What? Oh, sorry, I’m not a pizza man. I was looking for Dan, erm, Howell, but—“

“You’re looking for my dad?” Esther’s eyebrows rise as though she finds this difficult to believe, but then she shrugs, closes the door, locks it, and walks back into the flat.

“Where’s the pizza?” Hannah asks her as she steps back into the lounge, but Esther just shakes her head and makes her way over to their father’s bedroom door.

She knocks loudly on it.

“Dad! There’s someone here for you. It’s not the pizza man.”

There’s a pause before she can hear the sound of footsteps, and then her dad opens the door. Even Esther can’t help but notice his puffy, red eyes and splotchy cheeks.

“Did he tell you his name?”

She shakes her head.

“What did he look like?”

“Ummmm,” she rolls her eyes off to the side as she tries to remember, “super tall, with black hair and like a really big nose—“

“Oh,” Dan says and pushes past her and Hannah, who has come up behind her sister to keep an eye on the proceedings.

They trail after their dad as he strides over to the door and flings it open. Hannah notes that he has been crying but also that he doesn’t really look sad anymore. She thinks he looks more energetic now, maybe even angry.

“Hi,” the man on the other side of the door says. “You have kids.”

“Yeah, I have kids. How did you find out where I live?”

Hannah peeks around from behind her dad’s legs to try to take the stranger’s measure. He is very tall, just like Esther said, but then again so is Daddy. He doesn’t look very dangerous, with his slightly-hunched shoulders and one lip caught between his teeth. He’s saying something about an internet search that Hannah doesn’t really understand, but then he starts apologizing to Hannah’s dad, and her ears perk up again.

“—I just panicked. I’m so sorry, Dan. Please, give me another chance. Maybe we could—“

“Excuse me,” someone says from behind the stranger, and all four pairs of eyes turn to take in a woman standing there wearing a uniform and balancing two pizza boxes in one hand while trying to read a receipt held in the other. “Is this where Mr. Dan Howell lives?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Daddy says and then gestures at Esther, whose mouth drops open. She turns and scampers back into the living room. “Just a moment and we’ll have your money for you. Er, Phil, do you want to step inside for a moment while I—“

“Oh, right, sure,” the strange man says, and Hannah and her dad step aside so that the man can squeeze past them into the small front entryway. Esther dashes back in then, ducking around her dad’s long legs and thrusting her pile of bills out towards the pizza lady.

“Here you go,” the pizza lady says, holding her boxes out toward Dan with one hand while accepting the offered money from Esther with the other. “Have a great evening!”

And then she’s gone, and Daddy closes the door behind her, and then it’s just the four of them standing in awkward silence in the entryway.

Hannah peeks first at her dad and then at the stranger. They’re staring at each other in a way that Hannah can’t really understand, though she finds it intriguing.

“Ahem,” —that’s her dad— “Do you, er, want to stay for dinner? It’s just pizza, but—“

“Yeah, that’d be great,” the stranger says, then rushes to add, “I mean, if you don’t mind. If it’s an imposition, I don’t want to—“

“It’s fine,” Daddy says. “Esther, Hannah, this is Phil, my old friend. He’s going to have dinner with us tonight. Phil, this is Esther, who is eight, and Hannah, who is four. Girls, say hello.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Phil,” Esther says, grinning wide and holding out a hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Hannah mumbles, refusing to leave the safety behind her dad’s knees.

“Girls, why don’t you go set out plates and napkins and glasses for all of us while I show Phil around.”

**

Phil is sitting next to Dan on his couch. He had stayed through dinner — pizza around the table with Dan’s eldest daughter chattering happily at him and his youngest gazing around at all of them with an unusually shrewd gaze — and he had stayed through several rounds of MarioKart (the older girl, Esther, had beaten him twice). When Hannah’s bed time had been announced, it had taken only a quick shared glance with Dan to know that he wasn’t allowed to leave yet. He’d stayed through the four-year-old being tucked in while Esther demonstrated her vocal range and knowledge of Disney song lyrics for him. And then at last Dan had reappeared and sent Esther off to her room for homework and taken her place beside Phil on the couch, and now here they are, side by side, eyes cautiously taking one another in.

“Esther is really talented,” Phil ventures. Every topic feels like a potential landmine, but he thinks it might be safest to start with the present.

“Music runs in the family, I guess,” Dan shrugs, tilting his head just a bit to the side. Phil knows that the expression is a question. _Is that really what you’re here to discuss?_

“I’m sorry I ran away.”

Dan straightens his head and his gaze shifts right. He looks different than the sixteen-year-old Phil had known. He is taller, shoulders broader, skin paler. Phil knows that this man sat next to him on the couch is Dan, but he’s having a difficult time connecting him to the slender boy he used to be in love with.

“I can’t really blame you,” Dan says at last. “This whole thing is really…weird.”

“It’s just…,” Phil shrugs, a gesture more of unease than of uncertainty, “My girlfriend broke up with me yesterday, and I’m already in kind of a… I mean, it just felt like too much, you know?”

Dan’s eyes shift left again, back to Phil’s face, and looking into his eyes, Phil sees something there at last — the dark, the pull, _November evening soaked in rain._

“Your girlfriend broke up with you?” Dan repeats, and the way he says it reminds Phil that it was Dan who had sought him out. After twelve years of absolute silence, and twelve years of Phil’s hope slowly draining away, Dan had fulfilled his promise at last.  _I’ll find a way._

“Where were you? Why now? Why did you suddenly decide to look for me now, Dan?” The words are choking out of him, through a throat that has drawn painfully tight. “It’s been so long. Where were you?”

Dan’s eyes don’t leave his face.

“Florida,” he says. “Mostly. I mean, for the past six months I’ve been here in London, but before that…Florida.”

It’s such a mundane response. They both know it doesn’t answer Phil’s question.

Phil waits.

“Six months ago my divorce was finalized,” Dan says at last. “We were married for nine years. I met her at church.”

Phil’s eyebrows rise. He’s doing some mental math. Dan is nearly twenty-nine. Nine and a half years ago, he would have been nineteen. He thought of Dan at sixteen — Dan who sneaked out of the house with him in the middle of the night to leave condoms in a homophobic bully’s car, Dan who slipped into his bed in the dark and taught him what it felt like to have a lover. He tried to imagine that Dan a couple of years later, meeting a nice girl at church and marrying her right away.

“She’s a singer, like Esther. I fell in love with the way she sang,” Dan is explaining, and Phil wonders if Dan can read all of his questions on his face. “There weren’t a lot of other people our age around. Well, there weren’t a lot of other people around full stop. We all lived on this big estate out in the middle of nowhere. There were about fifty of us living there. ‘Sheltering from the world’ is what they called it. Us kids weren’t allowed to leave the grounds. The adults didn’t want to. They called it ‘Eden.’”

Phil’s face has fallen quiet now. It’s no longer demanding answers.

“I got really into playing piano,” Dan continues. “There was hardly anything else to do, other than schoolwork or prayer or reading the Bible. We had no TV, no phones, no computers — not even a radio that might broadcast ‘devil music’ to taint the purity of our souls. Maria liked to sing, and I liked to play piano, so we made a couple of the other kids learn to play guitar and drums, and we formed a band. We sang songs about God and heaven and all that crap because it was what we were allowed. We got really good. I mean, band practice was one of the only interesting things to do.

“Then our pastor told our parents that ‘for the good of the community’ we should start recording our songs and selling them. Eden needed money to keep it going, and our albums certainly brought in plenty of money.”

The side of Dan’s mouth has quirked up in a dark smile.

“The first time they let me leave the place, after my family started living there, was for me and Maria’s honeymoon. We went to Disney World for three days. It was incredible…overwhelming.” He shakes his head, and Phil is startled to see tears at the corners of his eyes. Without thinking, he stretches a hand across the leather couch cushion and places it atop Dan’s. Dan’s smile deepens. “I don’t think you can understand, if you’ve never lived in a place like that, what it’s really like to be utterly cut off from the world. I’d been stuck there for almost three years at that point, Maria for six, and the world outside was jarring…terrifying, even.

“I could easily have escaped then.” He pauses, his teeth drawing his lower lip between them. “I didn’t want to anymore, though. I didn’t want to go back to England or call you or have a normal life again. I just wanted to go back to Eden and hide from all the noise and strangeness of the outside world.”

_He’d lost a part of himself, and he knew he would never get it back. The person he was before Eden, the person who had fallen in love with Phil, the person Phil had loved, had been suffocated to death by Eden’s sheltered silence._

_So why was he here now, with Phil’s hand over his and blood pumping hot in his ears?_

“After a while, the pastor said we should start performing shows outside. I didn’t want to, at first.” A snort of laughter leaves Dan’s nose. “Maria had to talk me into it. But at last I gave in, and a few shows at local churches turned into a tour of Florida, which in turn became a tour of the entire Bible Belt.

“That was the beginning of the end.” Dan stops, and without warning, he turns his hand and takes a hold of Phil’s. Before Phil has a chance to withdraw, Dan is squeezing his hand in a way that makes the twelve years since they last kissed seem short.

“Maria loved the stage and the money and the people at the parties afterward. And the more I saw of the people who loved our music, the more I came to despise everything about it. After the first year, we reduced the amount of our profits that we donated to Eden from 100% to only 10% — a Biblical tithe. And once we were financially independent, it just made sense to buy our own home, away from the pastor and our parents. We already had Esther then, and Maria and I both agreed we didn’t want her growing up in Eden--”

“Dad?”

They both jump at the sound, and Dan swiftly withdraws his hand from Phil’s. He turns a little to see Esther stood in the corridor in her pajamas, peeking around the corner into the lounge. He’s been so engrossed in the story he is telling Phil that he’s forgotten that Esther isn’t in bed yet.

“It’s past your bedtime, love. What are you doing up?”

Instead of answering, she scurries over and climbs up onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. Dan can’t help but blink in surprise. She hasn’t done this for years, since she turned six at least.

“I want you to tuck me in, like you used to,” she murmurs.

She’s speaking to her father, but her eyes are fixed on Phil, the wary gaze of a child who’s seen her entire world turned upside down and doesn’t appreciate newcomers showing up to upset things even further. It’s almost a territorial look, with her arms held tight around her father’s neck. She’s reminding Phil that, whoever he is, she has the prior claim.

“Perhaps it’s time I headed home,” Phil begins to say, but Dan holds a hand out.

“Not just yet. Let me— Esther, I’ll tuck you in, okay? Just run along to your room first.”

She looks like she might argue for a moment, lips thinning out into a dangerous line, but then she seems to change her mind and, with one last hard look for Phil, she slithers to the floor.

“Can you read me a story like you did for Hannah?” she asks over her shoulder as she heads back toward the corridor.

Dan raises an eyebrow, but all he says is, “We’ll see.”

When she’s gone, he puts his fingers to his temples and gives them a slight, agitated rub.

“God, I hope she didn’t hear any of that,” he mutters and drops his hands with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I know it’s late, and I’ve kept you here for hours now. I just…didn’t want you to leave without a promise that we can see each other again.”

Phil hesitates. He thinks he wants to see Dan again, but then again, he’s already gotten the answers he wanted and Dan’s life is clearly a messy one. Not that he’s really got it all together himself, but…getting involved with Dan again means getting involved with an ex-wife and two school-aged girls and a pair of crazy parents and what sounds very much like a cult. And is it really worth it? Is it worth getting tangled up in all of that just on the off chance that loving Dan now will be as wonderful as it was when they were teenagers?

He lets out a long breath.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, right?”

Dan nods.

“Okay. I think… I think I need some time to think, so can we plan to meet up on Sunday?”

Dan has to swallow at least a dozen questions, but he manages to keep them down and nod his agreement.

“Would Sunday morning be all right? I can send the girls to church with a friend, and that would give us time to talk.”

“Yeah, that should work,” Phil says.

There is a long pause, and then they both stand and make their way to the front door. Dan opens the door and holds it for Phil, but for several seconds, Phil doesn’t walk through it. Instead, he stands there, heart hammering in his chest, and holds out one hand. Dan blinks at it, forgetting for a moment what the gesture means. Oh, right. Phil wants to shake hands. Twelve years Dan has imagined what it would be like to touch Phil again, to hold him in his arms, to press kisses to his skin. He takes Phil’s hand and shakes it, and Phil leaves.

While Phil is trudging toward the tube station thinking about the way his palm is tingling, Dan is heading to his daughter’s room, where she sits in bed scrolling through her iPod again. He doesn’t have to look at the screen to know that she is listening to one of her mother’s songs (it’s his song too, of course, even if it’s her voice that everyone notices). His heart squeezes in his chest, and he wonders for the umpteenth time if he is just a horribly selfish person for breaking up their home. Not that Maria wasn’t relieved when he asked for the divorce. Not that he didn’t know, in a logical sort of way, that it was for the best.

Esther pulls her earbuds out as he sits on the end of her bed.

“Why did you talk to that man for such a long time?” Her eyes are wide and guileless. In moments like these, he really appreciates his daughter’s directness.

“We used to be friends, a long time ago, before I moved to America,” he explains, clasping his hands together and hoping she won’t ask too many questions. “We hadn’t seen each other for a long time, so we had a lot to talk about.”

She nods and sets her iPod on the edge of her bedside table, starting to snuggle under her duvet.

“You seemed really sad earlier, but you don’t seem sad now,” she observes, and she pulls the covers up around her.

“I’m not sad now,” Dan agrees, reaching over and tucking in the edges of the duvet. “Did you still want me to read you a story?”

“No, it’s alright,” she grins, settling herself back on her pillows. “Good night, Daddy.”

“Good night,” he says, dropping a kiss on her forehead and catching the light on his way out of the room.

While Dan is sliding into his own bed and falling into the easiest and most untroubled sleep he’s enjoyed in years, Phil is standing under the shower in his own flat and letting the hot water from the shower head mingle with the hot water leaking from his eyes.

He used to know exactly what he wanted, and it was very simple: Dan, in his life again. And now that he had him, he realized he didn’t have a clue what to do with him. He’d spent more than a decade yearning for a beautiful memory, but what he’d gotten was a real, live person. How had it never occurred to him that the past, once gone, was gone forever?

 

_He lay in Phil’s bed with bright sunlight heavy on his eyelids. They had been up very late the night before, and at the memory, a quick smile blossomed in his chest. He wasn’t yet awake enough for the smile to spread to his face. In fact, he was just enough asleep that his brain was confusing the warm emotion with the warm comfort of the bed, and for a moment it was like he was floating on a soft cloud of happiness._

_“I love you.”_

_The voice above him drew him up into full consciousness at last. It was nothing more than a whisper, and he understood that he wasn’t meant to hear it. But he did. He heard, and it was like the sunshine filling the room was not pouring through the window but from inside him instead. Like he had swallowed the sun, and all its gold was bursting from the core of him._

_When he felt Phil’s tickling breath at his ear, he couldn’t help but laugh, all the light within him rippling out with the sound._

_But then there was the knock at the door, and Phil’s mum’s voice._

_“I need to talk to you two outside immediately. No arguments.”_

_And after that he remembers only darkness._

On Sunday, Dan is up at an ungodly hour, getting the girls dressed and fed in time for his friend Lucy to come pick them up. She has a son who goes to the same school as Esther — in fact, she’d been the one who had convinced him to send Esther there in the first place. Unlike Dan, Lucy still believes in God and going to church and all of that, but in a gentle, unassuming way. He has no qualms sending his daughters along with her on the occasional Sunday, if only to give himself a few hours’ break from parenting.

Esther is almost giddy with excitement. She’s always loved going to church, what with the singing and all the new people to meet. Hannah, as usual, looks less sure about it, but she’s always willing to follow anywhere her big sister leads.

“Are you both going to behave today?” Dan asks as he smooths down one of Hannah’s curls that is threatening to break loose from her barrette.

“Yep!” Esther crows, face split wide in a grin.

“Yes, Daddy,” Hannah echoes. Then she adds, “Why aren’t you coming with us?”

He admires Hannah’s precociousness. He really does, but today he could really do without it.

“I’ve got some important errands to take care of,” he says, trying not to feel nervous under the combined gaze of four wide, dark eyes. “Ciaran’s mum will be with you, and she has my cell number in case you need to talk to me, okay?”

“Okay,” they say in unison.

Fortunately, Lucy appears shortly after that and takes the girls away, and Dan sighs in relief. Now he has time to do something about his own appearance.

It’s not a date, he reminds himself, as he tries on outfit after outfit, discarding each as inadequate. There’s every chance that, far from wanting to date him, Phil will want nothing more to do with him after this. They’re practically strangers at this point. What, really, do they have between them to base a relationship upon?

He can’t come up with any good answers for this as he stands before his bathroom mirror, trying to get his hair to lie just so. He does remember, vividly, the tingle that crept up his arm when Phil reached out and took hold of his hand. It was probably just surprise. Probably.

Six months ago on his first night in his new flat in London, he’d stood before this same mirror and discovered that he no longer knew who the person looking back at him was. The purpose of Eden, the reason his parents had been so bent on keeping him there, was to wear away at him until every “wrong” part of him had been erased forever. He’d escaped in a physical sense, but he was terrified that the damage was already done. When he’d tried to recall the last time he’d really felt normal, the last time he’d really felt sure of who he was and what he wanted in life, he’d had to cast his memory back more than a decade, to when he was a teenager lying in bed next to a boy who told him he loved him. It was a tragedy, he’d thought, that every good thing that had happened to him since, even down to the births of his daughters, had happened to a stranger.

He’d wanted to make himself whole again, and he’d thought that maybe Phil was the piece of him that had gone missing. Except that Phil was a whole person in and of himself, and what were the chances there was still a place in his life where Dan would fit?

 

Phil is waiting at a table in the corner of the Starbucks where they’d agreed to meet. He’s watching the clouds gather outside the window, so he doesn’t notice Dan until he’s standing right there above him.

“Hi,” Dan says, and Phil jumps a little.

“Oh, hey,” he says and makes a vague gesture toward the empty chair across from him.

Dan settles in, meeting Phil’s bright eyes for just a moment before glancing down at the coffee he holds. There’s a silence while they each allow the other the opportunity to speak first.

“What do you want from me, Dan?” Phil says at last. “What do you want from…this?” He moves a hand through the empty space between them, a gesture meant to encompass the totality of their relationship.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, meeting Phil’s eyes again, hoping he understands how honest he is trying to be. “I thought… Maybe, on some level, I thought you could fix me, somehow. Or, I don’t know, remind me of myself. I know that was stupid. I think I’ve gotten past that, but I still… I’ve thought about you a lot these past twelve years.”

Phil stares out the window a while longer before responding. He nods slowly, once.

“Yeah, me too.”

The clouds outside have turned from blinding white to grey, and Dan thinks it might be about to rain.

“Can I tell you something kind of weird and probably too personal?” Phil says all of a sudden.

Dan lets out a breath of laughter through his nose.

“Go on then.”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever said ‘I love you’ to, like, in a romantic sense,” Phil rushes the words out in a mumble, and Dan is barely able to catch them. “And I don’t think you even heard me when I said it.”

Dan forgets to breathe for just a moment.

“No, I heard you,” he says after a long silence. “I was already a little bit awake.”

Phil glances up at him, the hint of a smile playing around the corners of his lips.

“It’s kind of why my girlfriend just broke up with me,” Phil sighs. “We dated for six months, and I still couldn’t say it.” He pauses, raises his drink to his lips. When he lowers the cup, a little bit of foam clings to his upper lip. “I think I do love her. Or did. Or do. I don’t know, Dan. I’m just really fucked up when it comes to love.”

Dan’s fingers are itching to reach over and wipe the foam from Phil’s lip, so he slides his hands under his thighs to keep them still.

“I’ve only ever been in love with two people in my life,” Dan offers, “I mean, really in love. Just you and Maria. I’m not exactly great at love myself.”

Phil meets his eyes then, his gaze so open Dan feels he is staring straight into the heart of him.

“I don’t love you anymore,” Phil says. He takes a deep breath, in and out. “I thought I was still in love with you, after all these years, but I’m not. The person I’m still in love with doesn’t exist anymore, and that’s… Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but that’s hard for me to accept.”

Dan nods. He knows. The boy they both remember disappeared years ago among the trees of Eden, and there is no resurrecting him. He opens his mouth again to explain this to Phil, but Phil waves him to silence.

“I know that’s a really messed up thing for me to say to you, and I’m sorry. I’m not, like, demanding that you try to change yourself, or… I guess, it’s hard for me to accept that you’re someone different now, but it’s not impossible. I have accepted it, Dan. I’m not in love with you anymore because I don’t even know you, but… But I think I’d like to. Know you, I mean. If you’re up for it.”

There’s something fluttering in the back of Dan’s throat that makes it hard to breathe, and he’s pretty sure it’s his heart. Outside, a crack of thunder shakes the sky, and the clouds open and begin dumping their rain on the city. Dan’s hands are enjoying the warmth from his coffee cup, but he sets it down anyway and leans forward across the table.

“You’ve got something,” he mutters, and Phil sits very still as he rubs the pad of his thumb across Phil’s upper lip. “There we go.”

He leans back, and without warning a smile breaks across his face, and it must be contagious, for he finds that Phil is grinning too.

“Yeah, I think I’m up for it.” He has to raise his voice a little to be heard above the rain pounding against the pavement and the roof, but Phil hears him, loud and clear.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Phandom Big Bang 2015


End file.
